one night, the charges of the sellers are made in a somewhat more arbitrary manner than is consistent with very scrupulous truth and fairness; that Saturday evening purchasers are not only put off with inferior articles, but are made also to pay as much as twenty per cent. above the every-day value of the best. But even without imputing any such malpractices to the dealers, even admitting that the tradesmen from whom the poor must purchase are as superior to the tricks of trade as the best of Regent-street shopkeepers-it is evident that those who have always to be served in a hurry must always be served ill. They have no time to deliberate over their purchases, to choose and pick and select what will best suit their means and most nearly meet their wants; they are deprived of all opportunity of making the little money at their disposal go as far as possible; they are, as it were, forced into extravagance and mismanagement. Even if the women of the poorer classes were good housewives, well skilled in matters of domestic economy, as they are notoriously the reverse, they would fare ill in such a rush and press of buyers, and the work which has to be done in haste and confusion would be ill done, however well they understood their business. As they are most often lamentably deficient in all that would be to them really "useful knowledge," while subject in the market to disadvantages which must neutralize skill and render care almost impossible, what wonder that the artisan's home is so comfortless, his wages so insufficient and ill-husbanded, as they are found in practice? Which of the oppressions he complains against weighs so heavily on him as this Saturday night marketing, of which he makes no complaint?

Of the evils here exposed there are three principal causes: the improvidence of the working-classes themselves, their unfortunate habits of Saturday and Sunday drinking, and the custom of paying wages on Saturday afternoons.

The first affords the answer to the question, why might not the poor avoid

this hurried marketing? Though they are only paid on Saturday evening, might they not let the Sunday pass over, and make purchases on the Monday sufficient to last till the Monday following? Or why need they make a week's purchases all at once? Might they not buy meat and potatoes on Monday, coal and wood and bread on Wednesday? Might they not, in a word, by little thought and prudence, enjoy the advantage of buying, at their own option, on any evening of the week? Possibly they might; but those greatly miscon ceive both their circumstances and their character who consider it at all probable that they will. It is a matter of painful certainty that vast numbers of our working population are to the last degree reckless and improvident; unable to resist the temptations of to-day, or steadily regard and provide for the necessities of to-morrow.

As economists would say, the effective desire of accumulation is very weak with them; in Mr. Mill's expressive phrase, the present occupies a wholly disproportionate space in their thoughts as compared even with the immediate future. We have heard of the disciples of the Jesuits of Paraguay-the Indian converts who could hardly be brought to regard "next year" as a time within the limits of human thought; a period for which they were bound to consider and provide. Scarcely by unremitting care could their spiritual pastors and temporal rulers persuade them to preserve sufficient seed-corn to secure an adequate harvest; nor was it an uncommon occurrence that the oxen used for ploughing should be cut up for supper, because their masters were hungry. And this, not because the men were idle, or stupid, or sensual; but because they were incapable of taking to-morrow into account; because they were, in the literal sense of the word, improvident-unforeseeing. Our Eng

lish artisans resemble these Indians not a little in the economy of their domestic arrangements. They think far too much of to-day; far too little of this day week; little or nothing of this

One

day six months. With their wages in their pocket on Saturday night, they provide luxuries for Sunday, without caring much if scanty comfort remain for Friday next. They think more of the Sunday's ample breakfast, and even luxurious dinner, than of the supper which they will not be able to buy on Thursday night-of Friday's meagre fare of the dry crusts which must satisfy their hunger and their children's during the working hours of Saturday, till pay-time comes round again. day's feasting, and six days' fasting, is their choice; and it has happened to employers in moderate circumstances, to see their labourers, earning perhaps 30s. a week per family, take home the delicacies of the season for their Sunday dinner, when the price was yet so high that the tradesman or manufacturer of 8007. or 1,000l. a year did not feel that he could afford them. A six days' pinching follows. By Saturday afternoon there is not a crust of bread in the cottage; the children are hungry, as well they may be; the father has done his work fasting, and the wages which he brings home must be at once spent in buying food, even if they have not been already tithed by the publican before they reach the wife. How can these people postpone their purchases till Monday? Or if one week some rare good fortune enabled them to do so, is it not clear that the effect would only be, with such habits, to make them live in comfort that week, consuming in six days what seven days' income had purchased; and that when Saturday night came round, the cupboard would again be bare, and the Saturday market again be sought? We have most of us heard of worse improvidence than this. I was told of one district-a district, too, of good work and high wages-where the wife keeps house by pawning clothes and household chattels during the week, which the husband must for his own comfort and satisfaction redeem on Saturday night-finding this the only mode of securing a sufficient share of his income for herself and children. It is this improvidence which causes the

habit.

Unhappily this is not all; it is not the worst. Give the working man a prudent and thrifty helpmate, willing and able to employ his wages to the best advantage: the Sunday holiday will sadly derange her prudent calculations. We know too well the way in which that day of rest is most often spent by those to whom it should be more blessed than to any others-those whose six days' toil has made it most necessary to them. Most generally, Saturday night and Sunday are thought a good occasion for "a spree" and a "spree seems to mean a prolonged visit to the gin-shop or the beer-house. The London artisan sometimes indulges in a Sunday trip into the country; too frequently he merely lounges about the streets, picks up a stray acquaintance, and goes with him to the working man's club-the publichouse. If the wife save her money till Monday, she cannot count on the forbearance of her husband. In many and many a case, were we to watch her home from the Saturday market, we should see a very sufficient reason for her hasty expenditure of the funds which she had obtained from her good man immediately after he received his wages. The idle day that follows is apt to make the "Cottar's Saturday Night" in towns an occasion, for the man who for that one night is "flush" of money, of boozing in a beer-shop or getting maddened with the worst of adulterated beverages in a gin-palace; and if the week's wages were still within his reach, it is but too probable that the Sunday would be still more riotously and expensively passed. Bad and wasteful as it is, the Saturday evening marketing is probably the safest,

plan for wives whose husbands are that day paid their weekly stipend.

But why should wages be paid on Saturday evening? Why should a

working man receive his money just when he has most temptation to misspend it, and least chance of spending it with full effect and advantage? Why should those who are as a class notoriously thriftless and improvident be always"in pocket" at the moment when they have a day before them which they can devote to idleness and pleasure-an evening on which they may drink their fill with the certainty of having time. to sleep off the consequences, unaroused by the bell that summons to work, and taking little heed, alas! of those that call to prayer? Is there any reason, except that such is the custom-a custom stupid, purposeless, and mischievous? Is it that the employer may make up the account of the week's expenses at the week's end? A poor excuse this would be for an arrangement by which so much substantial injury is done to the workpeople. Why should not the week be made, for purposes of account, to end on another day? Is it that the poor may always have wherewithal to enjoy their one weekly holiday? Probably some feeling of this kind has had something to do with the practice. But-putting

aside all other and higher considerations -is it not obvious that the expenses of a holiday should be defrayed from the surplus that remains after the ordinary expenses of living are paid-as would be the case if the artisan, receiving his wages and making his weekly purchases on Wednesday, retained something for a spree on Saturday night or an excursion trip on Sunday-not deducted beforehand from the week's income, as now happens? Is there any tenable reason why wages should be paid on Saturday (or even late on Friday night, which is found to amount nearly to the same thing) and not on Wednesday or Thursday? For if not, certainly it is absurd that mere use and custom should maintain a rule so prejudicial to the real interests of all parties concerned. The workman is tempted to waste his money

in drink, and his day of rest at the public-house. His wife is compelled to waste her portion in hurried and uneconomical marketing. She and her children suffer thereby ; and her husband is none the better for his Saturday carouse, and inevitably the worse for the Sunday's debauch that too often follows. On the Monday he is listless and slovenly at his work; by which, as well as by the deterioration which bad habits cause in his character and his skill, his employer also is a loser. It may be said, and I am afraid it is in some cases true, that if wages were paid on Thursday, men would be drunk that night, and absent or late on Friday morning. In some trades the workmen have, from incidental circumstances, so completely the upper hand that this would very probably be the case and in these trades Monday is often wasted in intoxication or idleness. The men know that the masters cannot replace them, and will not dismiss them, and they take advantage of this knowledge. But this is only the case in trades exceptionally situated; and in all others the evils complained of would be greatly lessened, if not absolutely removed, by a mere change of the pay-day. There would not then be before the artisan, with his week's wages in his pocket, the strong temptation of a dies non wherein to enjoy himself at leisure in the tap-room; or to rest from the fatigues of a midnight carouse that very night. The necessity of resuming work at an early hour next morning would restrain him from changing his regular time of indulgence from Saturday to the pay-day; and if he still continued to drink on Saturday night, he would not do so on a newly-filled pocket.

The experiment was tried some years ago by a clear-headed Scotch employer, who gave me the following account of its results :

"When I was in business in Glasgow "I employed about a hundred persons, "men and women. I used, as was the "practice, to pay them on Saturdays. "Saturday is rather a 'light' day in "Glasgow, so the men had plenty of

a

"opportunity to get drunk that night; "practice which they often followed up "by remaining drunk all Sunday, in "which case, of course, their work was "not good for much on Monday morning, "especially as they got drunk on whisky, "which is much worse than getting "drunk on ale. It occurred to me one day to try whether I could not mend "the matter by altering the pay-day. I "called the men and women together, "and told them my ideas about it. The "women heartily agreed with me; the "men seemed nothing loth; and the change was made. They were paid "thenceforward on Thursday, instead of "Saturday. From that time their habits "improved, their homes became more "comfortable, their visits to the public "house less frequent. The women, no "longer obliged to do their marketing "in a hurry on Saturday evening, had "the pick and choice of articles, instead "of being forced, as formerly, to take anything they could get. Before long "I had the gratification of hearing from "many quarters that my people were "the most sober, well-to-do, and well"conducted artisans in the trade to be "found in Glasgow."

It is not from indifference to the welfare of their workpeople, or from carelessness of their own interest, that employers generally continue a practice so deleterious to both. Many great firms in London have changed the day of payment with excellent effect; some have tried to do so and failed, or been compelled to return to the old practice; numbers would be glad to make the alteration if they were convinced of its importance and its feasibility. But, in the first place, men do not readily recognise the evil effects of an immemorial custom; they conceive them rather to be part of the natural and immutable order of things, than results of a definite and removable cause; and employers are very generally unsuspicious that Saturday marketing, Sunday trading, and weekly debauches, result from any other influence than the natural improvidence and weakness of the artisan

con

class faults which they may regret but cannot cure. They say, and very justly, that it is not given them to keep their "hands" provident and sober; but they would fully recognise the duty of offering no temptation to excess, and no inducement to waste; and anything that will awaken them to a sense of the mischiefs of the present custom, will render them as a class desirous to amend it. On their part the "evil is wrought by want of thought." But change, where the working-classes are cerned, is not always an easy matter. In their own affairs, in regard to the time-honoured customs of their order and occupations, the masses share the sturdy Toryism of Lord Eldon; and it is not absolutely certain that if such a boon as Thursday payment of wages were offered them, they would not regard it as some deep-laid plot for their enslavement. But the time may come when they will understand their own interest well enough to ask it for themselves; and the simple change, costing no trouble, and exciting no clamour, will do more for their improvement than many schemes of much more ambitious seeming. It would prevent the crowding of the week's marketing into its last five or six hours, and of the week's meals into the Sunday dinner. It would facilitate, in no slight degree, what is a blessing of no small value to the labourer

the Saturday half-holiday, now generally enjoyed in the manufacturing districts of the north of England. Above all, it would cure the evil that now does so much to demoralize the population of our cities, and to thwart all efforts to counteract the prevalence of that drunkenness which more than any other cause keeps them poor and discontented; for it would put an end to the practice of filling the artisan's pocket with money at the very hour when the tavern doors stand most invitingly open, and no thought of tomorrow's work exercises a wholesome restraint over the temptation to immediate excesses.